Reform of the Court of Auditors, from tomorrow more limits to accounting compensation

In force from tomorrow the reform of the Court of Auditors. This is a crucial step and the subject of multiple objections by those who see in the intervention a segment of a broader project to soften the system of controls on public administration that has had among its other qualifying elements the abolition of abuse of office and the constitutional law on the separation of careers.

Among the immediately operative and most significant points is undoubtedly the introduction of a maximum limit on compensation for the damage to the state, which can never exceed 30% of the ascertained injury or in any case exceed two years' salary of the public employee. A measure that, for the accounting magistrates, depletes the compensatory effectiveness of the institute and fuels perceptions of impunity.

Liability must then be limited to acts and omissions committedwith malice or gross negligence, excluding the seriousness of the fault (with the consequence that the acts or omissions committed are no longer subject to liability action) if the damage originates from the issuance of an act endorsed or registered in the prior control of legitimacy, limited to the profiles taken into account in the exercise of the control.

Rather, serious misconduct is the manifest violation of the applicable rules of law, the misrepresentation of the fact, the assertion of a fact whose existence is excluded from the records of the proceedings or the denial of a fact whose existence is apparent from the records of the proceedings. The notion of serious misconduct, however, underlines the accounting judiciary, is different from that provided for in the Public Contracts Code, to which it overlaps with obvious application criticalities.

Liability for gross negligence is however completely excluded, not only in the case of the conclusion of conciliation agreements in mediation proceedings or in court by representatives of public administrations, but also in the case of the conclusion of tax assessment procedures with adhesion, mediation agreements, judicial conciliations and tax settlements in tax matters. In these cases, liability is limited only to acts and omissions committed intentionally.